through the sand again in a hired and springless Cape cart down to the Point, got into the port-captain’s boat and rowed across a little strip of sand at the foot of a winding path cut out of the dense vegetation which makes the bluff such a refreshingly green headland to eyes of wave-worn voyagers.  A stalwart Kafir carried our picnic basket, with tea and milk, bread and butter and eggs, up the hill, and it was delightful to follow the windings of the path through beautiful bushes bearing strange and lovely flowers, and knit together in patches in a green tangle by the tendrils of a convolvulus or clematis, or sort of wild, passion-flower, whose blossoms were opening to the fresh morning air.  It was a cool but misty morning, and though we got to our destination in ample time, there was never any sunrise at all to be seen.  In fact, the sun steadily declined to get up the whole day, so far as I knew, for the sea looked gray and solemn and sleepy, and the land kept its drowsy mantle of haze over its flat shore; which haze thickened and deepened into a Scotch mist as the morning wore on.  We returned by the leisurely railway—­a railway so calm and stately in its method of progression that it is not at all unusual to see a passenger step calmly out of the train when it is at its fullest speed of crawl, and wave his hand to his companions as he disappears down the by-path leading to his little home.  The passengers are conveyed at a uniform rate of sixpence a head, which sixpence is collected promiscuously by a small boy at odd moments during the journey.  There are no nice distinctions of class, either, for we all travel amicably together in compartments which are a judicious mixture of a third-class carriage and a cattle-truck.  Of course, wood is the only fuel used, and that but sparingly, for it is exceedingly costly.

There was still much to be done by the afternoon—­many visitors to receive, notes to write and packages to arrange, for our traveling of these fifty-two miles spreads itself over a good many hours, as you will see.  About three o’clock the government mule-wagon came to the door.  It may truly and literally be described as “stopping the way,” for not only is the wagon itself a huge and cumbrous machine, but it is drawn by eight mules in pairs, and driven by a couple of black drivers.  I say “driven by a couple of drivers,” because the driving was evidently an affair of copartnership:  one held the reins—­such elaborate reins as they were! a confused tangle of leather—­and the other had the care of two or three whips of differing lengths.  The drivers were both jet black—­not Kafirs, but Cape blacks—­descendants of the old slaves taken by the Dutch.  They appeared to be great friends, these two, and took earnest counsel together at every rut and drain and steep pinch of the road, which stretched away, over hill and dale, before us, a broad red track, with high green hedges on either hand.  Although the rain had not yet fallen long or heavily, the ditches were all running